50 Book Challenge 2020 Part Ten

[southeastdweller]

Welcome to the tenth (and final?) thread of the 50 Book Challenge for this year.

The challenge is to read fifty books (or more!) in 2020, though reading fifty isn't mandatory. Any type of book can count, it's still not too late to join, and please try to let us all know your thoughts on what you've read.

The previous threads of 2020:

1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9

I've just checked and these threads this year have moved more quickly than any other year since they started back in 2012! We'd never reached ten threads in any other year.

Flooding as well now? 2020 just keeps getting better doesn’t it!

I hope you’re not affected too badly by any flooding betts

or to everyone having a rough time. And thank you all for being here throughout.

Gosh, hope you're not affected by floods, bett, that truly would be the icing in the 2020 cake.

The Trekking the World game looks good - some similarities with Ticket to Ride, I think?

Re games, Palegreenstars, my DCs are 7 and 10 so we mainly play games that are suitable for them (although DH and I have others we play too). We have regular games nights, which the DCs see largely as an opportunity to eat snacks . Ticket to Ride is a big favourite, as are Carcassonne, Blokus, Concept, Sushi Go and Go Nuts for Donuts. DH and I like Love Letters and Codenames too, as well as things like Chronicles of Crime. I buy a lot of games from Zatu, as they're often cheaper than Amazon and have a great selection.

I've actually made a family games/snacks hamper for the holidays, containing about 10 new (small, cheap) games/quizzes and a load of snacks. The DCs get to choose a game and a snack every day, and we try playing and eating them respectively. DH and I are going to try out Hive to see if it's playable by the DCs. We've also got the Balthazar Snapdragon adventure box created by the Big Tony theatre company because we enjoyed doing their Charlotte Holmes one over the summer so much. I think we're probably pretty well stocked now .

Oh, and Forbidden Island and Castle Panic are fun if you like cooperative games (as is Chronicles of Crime, but that's only really suitable for teens and upwards).

They were discussing good games to play over Christmas on Front Row on Radio 4 earlier this evening but I'm afraid I didn't pay total attention as I was sorting the dinner. It'll be on BBC Sounds though.

(Warning: I couldn't help hearing them mention 'Pandemic'...)

Gosh, hope you're not affected by floods, bett, that truly would be the icing in the 2020 cake

It would. They have built a large estate up hill from us and now roads that didn't used to flood are flooding because of all the fields that it used to soak into are now more. Our road flooded maybe once or twice in 15 years but it's going to be more now.

The Trekking the World game looks good - some similarities with Ticket to Ride, I think?

I think it might be. I'll report back when we've played it on xmas day.

We have floods too. The Gods are trying to stop us going out in Tier 4.

(Warning: I couldn't help hearing them mention 'Pandemic'...)

My brother recommended that game to me - that’s another cooperative game I believe - but I’ve not tried it, the concept felt a bit too close to home at the minute!

Ooh thanks @mackerelfa and others my kid is younger and has just gotten into board games for the first time so starting to see opportunities for less bloodey imaginative play.

200. Lanny by Max Porter

(Blatantly saved my shortest til last! )

A would be writer and an insurance salesman have concerns over their fey and peculiar son Lanny who seems too at one with nature.

Another short book, with really strange concepts but I ended the year with a good one.

And with that STICK A FORK IN ME FOR I AM DONE. No more books for 2020. Have an Audible on the go that I won't finish til New Years Day at the earliest.

Will probably never read this many books in one year again, and I hope we never have another year like this. Am probably going to read weekends only in 2021 as I have another project.

At the risk of annoying Remus, I'm not going to list in full but I am going to list my highlights :

Fiction

Lincoln In The Bardo by George Saunders
Jamaica Inn by Daphne Du Maurier
The Moonstone by Wilkie Collins
Small Island by Andrea Levy
Half Of A Yellow Sun by Chimamanda Ngozi Achede
All Quiet On The Western Front by Erich Maria Remarque
Swan Song by Kelleigh Jephcott-Greenberg
My Dark Vanessa by Kate Elizabeth Russell
American Dirt by Jeanine Cumins
This Thing Of Darkness by Harry Thompson
A Little Life by Hanya Yanagihara
Daisy Jones and The Six by Taylor Jenkins Reid
The Seven Husbands Of Evelyn Hugo by Taylor Jenkins Reid
Before The Coffee Gets Cold/Tales From The Cafe by Toshikazu Kowaguchi
The Guest Cat by Takeshi Hirade
The Vegetarian by Han Kang
Old Baggage by Lissa Evans
Circe by Madeleine Miller
Lanny by Max Porter

Non Fiction :

Why I Am No Longer Talking To White People About Race by Reni Eddo-Lodge
Hidden Valley Road by Robert Kolker
Love Child by Allegra Huston
Alexander Hamilton by Ron Chernow
Lady In Waiting by Anne Glenconner
A Woman Of No Importance by Sonia Purnell
Kick by Paula Byrne
Long Walk To Freedom by Nelson Mandela
The Body Keeps The Score by Bessel Van Der Kolk
Another Day In The Death Of America by Gary Younge
Rough Magic by Lara Prior Palmer
First Lady by Sonia Purnell
Clothes Clothes Clothes, Music, Music, Music, Boys, Boys, Boys by Viv Albertine
Mrs Jordan's Profession by Clare Tomalin
Noble Savages by Sarah Watling
Just Kids by Patti Smith
No Place To Hide by Glenn Greenwald
Unnatural Causes by Richard Shephard
Mindfuck by Christopher Wylie
To Throw Away Unopened by Viv Albertine
The Order Of Time by Carlo Rovelli
Walking With Ghosts by Gabriel Byrne

Which means out of 200, I had a yield of 42 I actually loved and need to be a lot more discerning.

Signing off by wishing all 50 Bookers the best Christmas they can have and to those who know they won't, keep on keeping on.

MERRY CHRISTMAS FELLOW BOOKWORMS

Eine out

@EineReiseDurchDieZeit I finished Lanny just before bed. Such a strange book - as a Scot I felt like I was reading all the English village folk lore tropes as an outsider, but I loved it and Dead Papa Toothwort in all his rich fecundity. A truly original read.

281. The Children of Green Knowe by Lucy M Boston

One of my favourite Christmassy books.

282. Mr Dickens And His Carol by Samantha Silva

Another Christmassy favourite, telling the fictionalised story of how Dickens wrote A Christmas Carol. It’s lovely.

283. A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens

The classic.

Congratulations Eine ! And Chessie - are you tempted to push on to 300? Nice round number?

We have Pandemic coming for Christmas. I love the idea of games night, I might start that here but with the rule No Sodding Monopoly.

In fact, I know why we don't have games night. I like co-operative games or simple games of chance, DH and the kids like fiendish competitive games with lots of strategy, and love beating me because I am so bad at those kind of games.

Merry Christmas 50-Bookers!
Me and DD are planning to do the Icelandic book Flood tradition today- we'll do a bit of prep for dinner tomorrow, but were are bascially reading in front of the fire.
As we have no one to see and nowhere to go, I am hoping to have a late rally and make 75 books this year.

I finished A Casual Vacancy yesterday making 71, I'll finish A Christmas Carol on Audible while I am prepping the dinner, taking me to 72.

I've had quite a good reading year, with only two real stinkers Three Things About Elsie and Normal People.
My Highlights would be:
The Evening and the Morning by Ken Follett
The Dutch House by Ann Patchett
A Woman of No Importance by Sonia Purnell
Troubled Blood by Robert Galbraith
The Alice Network by Kate Quinn
Tombland C J Sansom
Fingersmith Sarah Waters
Hidden Figures by Margot lee Shetty

While I am here - the SJ Parris series are all 99p on Kindle today. Worth it or not?
I like historical fiction- enjoyed Shardlake but Phillipa Gregory irritates me.

I'm in tier 4 so my in-laws are no longer coming for Christmas, which means we have a 5kg turkey for five of us!

We like board games here too - Carcassonne and Pandemic are favourites (we already liked Pandemic before 2020!), and we're getting a couple of new ones for Christmas.

Hope the flooding isn't too bad betts.

Well done on getting to 200 Eine - amazing!

IME the trouble with Pandemic is you just think you're getting somewhere, then it all goes pear shaped & you lose horribly. Hmm, not at all like 2020 then.....

Happy (as possible) Christmas to all you 50-bookers!

I would love to get to 300 but can’t see me reading 17 books in 8 days. 290 is doable though.

Technically I’m over 300 anyway because back in the summer someone told me that loads of Sweet Valley High books were on kindle unlimited and I ended up reading about 100 of them. I didn’t count them as each one is only short and some of them I just skim read, so wouldn’t be able to properly count them all.

Congrats on the 20⁰, Eine!

Slightly jealous at all board games people have planned. It's just me and dd(13), which reduced our options. She humours me with the odd game of Scrabble, and is fully capable of beating me.

I haven't read meet outstanding books this year, but not many stinkers. Many have been solid 7 out of 10 contenders, meaning I was engaged while reading then but they won't linger after I close the final page. This includes been some decent genre stuff, mostly crime fiction - the Ben H Winters The Last Policeman trilogy was an interesting twist on this, as one man doggedly tries to solve a mystery as the world faces an imminent asteroid strike and society collapses.

Otherwise I liked:
Long Bright River, Liz Moore
Lincoln in the Bardo, George Saunders
Breaking and Mending, Joanna Cannon
Negative Capability, Michele Roberts
Requiem for a Wren, Neville Shute
Spam Tomorrow, Verily Anderson
David Copperfield, Charles Dickens (enhanced by seeing the film)
Mrs Miniver, Jan Struther
Bird by Bird, Annie Lamott
Rosie: Scenes from a Vanished Life, Rose Tremain
Piranesi, Susanna Clarke
Mothership, Francesca Segal

70. The Dark is Rising by Susan Cooper

My only re-read of 2020, my now-annual re-immersion into the second (and best) of Susan Cooper's fantastic Dark Is Rising series. In my view the ultimate children's/YA Christmas book. Will Stanton discovers that he is one of the Old Ones of the Light whose destiny is to stand together to defeat the Dark. This boom is the story of his quest for the six Signs, all set against a beautifully evoked Buckinghamshire Christmas of the 70s (or, really, any time you like). Starting to get a little bit of that warm fuzzy Christmas feeling now.

Seriously, phone, you autocorrect book to boom????

I'm really disgruntled now that I've got the whole The Dark is Rising series somewhere in this house - DH bought them for me one year - and I really want to read them. But I can't find them!

Congrats on a really impressive total Eine , Chessie and all the super-readers.

biblio - same here with games. It's just me and Dh but we might just break out the Scrabble. We're partial to the big festive cryptic crosswords as well, but had got out of the habit, so this year we might try and get back into them.

I'm working the week from the 28th, though. So not masses of free time to fill.

42. Blue Moon (Jack Reacher #24) by Lee Child

Standard JR story. Short sentences. Black and white. Human nature. JR good. Bad men bad. JR kill bad men. All good.

Piggy I hope the flooding is not causing problems for you.
We have blue skies and sunshine for the first time in a week I am ignoring the rain warning that just popped up

Recent reads:

Confessions of a male nurse I don't much care for the title of this series but this book was an interesting insight into life in nursing in several different areas of the profession both in the UK and NZ.

Confessions of a school nurse Written by the same author as above. He's working in an elite boarding school in the Alps. It's a very sad book when you read the experiences of the children of the super wealthy and how much they are neglected by their parents. I felt quite sorry for them, my children may be growing up in a house with less money than most but they are far more fortunate that the children in this book. A real eye opener.

The Christmas List good short story. Based on the tradition of letting letters to Father Xmas go up the chimney and what happens as a result. A very light hearted story and ideal for xmas eve.

The Crossing Odd, but short, true story of Poppa Neutrino.

Against all Odds: How Margaret Thatcher won the 1975 Tory leadership election This was a really interesting insight into what happened at the time. I'm not a Tory supporter or especially interested in politics but this book is well worth reading. Another short one.

Dare I weep, dare I mourn Short John Le Carre book about a man in the former West Germany who travels to East Germany to collect his father's body. I couldn't have read this a few months ago but I found it worth reading now. I can't say I enjoyed it but appreciated it.